Energy management and home automation has been known for many years. However, practical systems at reasonable cost, permitting effective energy usage control and functionally controlling the operation of various home appliances, still have not been developed. To the extent that such energy control and automation systems have been developed, the homeowner becomes a slave to the automatic system, rather than the automatic system being an aide to the homeowner. For example, systems exist to automatically turn on the lights at a certain time and turn them off at a second certain time. However, in some situations, the homeowner may desire that the lights be off when the computer has been set to keep them on. In such a situation, the homeowner must reprogram the computer, rather than merely turn the lights off by simply flipping a switch.
Examples of typical prior art automation and energy management systems are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,740,882 in the name of Miller, U.S. Pat. No. 4,695,880 in the name of Johnson et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,684,920 in the name of Reiter, U.S. Pat. No. 4,642,473 in the name of Bryant, U.S. Pat. No. 4,611,295 in the name of Fowler, U.S. Pat. No. 4,540,984 in the name of Waldman, U.S. Pat. No. 4,497,031 in the name of Froehling et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,471,232 in the name of Peddie et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,454,509 in the name of Burnnagel et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,418,333 in the name of Schwarzbach et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,389,577 in the name of Anderson et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,354,120 in the name of Schonnack, U.S. Pat. No. 4,345,162 in the name of Hammer, U.S. Pat. No. 4,319,319 in the name of Wygant, U.S. Pat. No. 4,264,960 in the name of Gurr, U.S. Pat. No. 4,244,022 in the name of Kendall, U.S. Pat. No. 4,223,379 in the name of Simcoe, U.S. Pat. No. 4,217,646 in the name of Caltagirone et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,213,182 in the name of Eichelberger et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,022,555 in the name of Smith, U.S. Pat. No. 3,906,242 in the name of Stevenson and U.S. Pat. No. 3,790,815 in the name of Karklys. Other energy managements systems are described in PCT Patent Application Number PCT/US. 87/02365, entitled "Energy Management System" in the name of Brown, Jr. et al., and French Patent 2,495,396 in the name of Pillebout.
It is also well known that each electrical power circuit in a building, such as a home, factory or the like, are protected by a fuse device, such as a circuit breaker, against power surges and overloads. Many appliances to be monitored, such as pumps and major appliances are included as the only power consuming appliance in the circuit, that is, the circuit breaker is designed to protect only that appliance. Other types of appliances, such as lights, small kitchen appliances and the like, may be grouped together in a single power circuit and share a common circuit breaker.
Where circuit breakers are used to protect the power circuit, the circuit breakers may include a small electric motor, which responds to appropriate electric controls signals for automatically tripping, setting or resetting the circuit breaker from a remote location. One significant difference between those appliances included with their own circuit breaker is that normally those appliances having their own circuit breaker are almost universally subject to automation and energy management, whereas only certain of the appliances plugged in to a multi appliance circuit will be energy managed and subject to automation. The motorized circuit breaker has been used in the past as a convenient element to manage the application of power to those single appliance circuits. Such motorized circuit breakers can be turned off at those desired times when it is desired that they not operate, such as the middle of the night for water heaters.
In order to have a fully automated facility, many times it is desirable for external signals, indicating a certain status, to be provided to the automation equipment in order to determine whether an appliance or device should be turned on or off. For example, if an automatic sprinkler system pump is being controlled by the automation system, it is desirable that system know whether the grass needs to be watered. Moisture sensing transducers or rain gauge transducers are well known and can provide such a signal indicating whether the ground is already moist or whether an adequate amount of rain has fallen. If such signals are provided, the automation system should respond thereto by not turning on the sprinkler system. Another example is an automatic light control system which may automatically turn on the lights as a certain time, such as dusk, and turn off the lights at a certain time, such as dawn. Optical sensors are well known devices to control such outdoor lights. In some circumstances, the homeowner desires to be able to override the sensor of the automation system. Many prior art devices would require the homeowner to reprogram a computer system, rather than simply operate a switch to reverse the automation systems sensor commands.
The automation system may additionally include items which are not typically subject to energy management such as being turned on and off. For example, the automation system may include a security system which responds upon sensing the opening or closing of windows or doors or the detection of a person by motion or heat sensing equipment. Upon detecting a breach of security, the automation system should automatically call for assistance or sound an alarm. Such a system can be incorporated into an overall automation system to automatically be turned on during certain hours, such as the middle of the night or the normal daylight hours when all family members are working or in school. However, such security systems must be easily reset whenever a family schedule change occurs, such as a person arriving home late in the evening or staying home from work due to illness, vacation, holidays and the like. Such resetting must be as simple as existing free standing systems by operating an encoded switch or the like, and not by reprogramming a computer.
In many energy management and home automation systems, it is not practical in every instance to send the status signals determining whether automation should occur or the homeowner override signals back to the central automation computer. For one thing, a computer would become overburdened in monitoring so many signals and this would result in delays between the sending of a signal and the servicing of a signal. For example, when the computer polling or being interrupted by a plurality of a status or override signals becomes backlogged by servicing too many requests, a person could walk into a room and find the lights would not go on for several seconds after the switch was turned, the police would be called before the security system override code was recognized and acted upon by the computer. To solve this problem, some mechanism, which is independent of the automation computer must be developed to override the computer's commands. In addition, it is further necessary that the homeowner have the final determination of whether the status signals are to be followed. For example, despite the fact a status signal indicates that sufficient rain has fallen so as to prevent the turning on of the automatic sprinkler system, the homeowner may desire the system be turned on for other reasons, such as newly planted grass. Hence, overall override means must be provided under the control of the homeowner to override either the automation system, as determined first by the computer system or, second, as determined by the response to the status signals.